**Date:** 1905-08
**Source:** Leninist Anthology, vol. 26
**Pages:** 32-33

37470

Dear Anatoly Vasilyevich!

I am extremely delighted with your plan for a pamphlet: "3 Revolutions." Drop your reply to Plekhanov for now—let that embittered doctrinaire bark away at himself. In such a moment to deliberately wade into philosophy!? You must work full-time for social democracy—do not forget that you are engaged for your entire working burden.a

But take up the 3 Revolutions as soon as possible and seriously. This theme must be worked out thoroughly and well. I am confident it could work out for you. To tell popularly the tasks of socialism, its essence and the conditions of its realization. Then—victory in the present revolution, the significance of the peasant movement (a special chapter), what now might be complete victory? temporary government, revolutionary army, insurrection—the significance and conditions of new forms of struggle. Revolution à la 1789 and à la 1848.3 Finally (it would be better to make this the second part, and the preceding one the third), on the bourgeois character of the revolution, more detailed on the economic side, and then expose the liberals root and branch in all their interests, tactics, and political chicanery.

Truly, a rich theme and a fighting one against the philistines of Iskra. Undertake it, please, quickly, and work on it more. It is extremely important to give a substantive popular work on this theme.

And then also concerning the split. You misunderstood me. You need not wait for me, because these are different themes: one—history (we shall try to set it in order); the other—a sketch of their polemical methods.4

A literary-critical essay on the theme: say, "Lubok Literature." And here already to examine, over several chapters, a whole pamphlet, with quotations and explanation, all this philistinism of Starover, Martov, and others in their polemic with Proletarian, as well as the rehashings in "Bolshevism and Menshevism," etc. Nail them for their paltry method of warfare. Make a type of them. Draw their portrait in full length from citations from themselves. I am confident it would work out for you—you need only gather up a little collection of citations.

I shake your hand firmly. Your Lenin.

P.S. I received the article about Kuzmin-Karavaev. The feuilleton from '48 as well.4

a Based on the decision of the Central Committee plenum of May 10, 1905, concerning the work of A. V. Lunacharsky (see Len. Ant. V, 281).

3 A brief sketch of an article on this theme, under the heading "Type of 1789 or 1848," is published in Len. Ant. V, 439-441.

4 Lunacharsky's article on Kuzmin-Karavaev under the heading "Flowers of Liberal Disputations" is preserved in the IMEL archive (No. 26744). It was not published. The feuilleton on the '48 was published in No. 20 of Proletarian of October 10 under the heading: "Essays on the History of the Revolutionary Struggle of the West European Proletariat. The February Revolution and Its Consequences."